


Something Borrowed

by littlemisfit5290



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Cancer Arc, Canon Compliant, Comfort/Angst, Episode Related, Episode: s02e08 One Breath, Episode: s10e03 Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster, F/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 09:36:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8139274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlemisfit5290/pseuds/littlemisfit5290
Summary: It was his favorite shirt. Now it's his favorite on her.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skuls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/gifts).



> Based off the quote prompt I received on Tumblr, "Can I Borrow A Shirt To Wear?"

The first day she wears the shirt is the first night she stays the night.

Her apartment was tainted by that maniacal son of a bitch, Duane Berry. You expect her to abide by her mother’s wishes and move in with her to recuperate.  
  
But she reminds you that she's a medical doctor, that she's vacated the hospital against medical advice, and is ready to hail a cab back to her apartment. That's when you step up and drive her home like the unworthy partner of her’s that you are. 

The elevator ride she's jittery, the walk down the hall she’s sheet white. You arrive at her door and her hand shakes so much she can't fit the key in the lock.  
  
You ease it from her trembling fingers, let yourself in to throw half her closet and the contents of two drawers in a suitcase.    
  
You skip the bathroom --any other necessities you'll swing by a drug store for later—rush back to her side, rest your arm at the small of her back and walk her to the car.  
  
You're selfishly grateful her eyes are open the remaining drive. You feel like you're parenting a newborn.  
  
_If she falls asleep will she wake back up?_

 

She showers and you sit on the toilet seat, making conversation and seeing that she doesn't slip or trip and that she has enough shampoo.  
  
When she tells you for the hundredth time that she's fine you make yourself useful, unpack her bag. Realize you grabbed her enough underwear to last into next month but forgot her shoes. And her pants.  
  
There's pajamas though of silky and flannel varieties. You leave both sets on the bed before retiring to the couch.  
  
You offer her her pick of the movie and/or total control of the remote but she politely declines, yawns adorably. You ask if she wants to be tucked in and she rolls her eyes, scowls less adorably before shutting the door behind her.  
  
Only an hour passes before you hear her scream. 

  
  
She sniffs, hiccups that it's nothing and shrugs off your touch but you stay. You'll sleep on the floor like a dog if need be.   
  
She acquiesces, rolls over but then you hear the squeak of your closet door at half past one.  
  
You stand, see her sillouette in the yellow light of the bulb. She’s rifling through a shelved stack of your folded shirts.  
  
You clear your throat, approach her and see the tear tracks. She looks down and away, ashamed, then murmurs about sweating through the flannel during her nightmare. She needs something lighter for tonight. Something soft. 

Her hand gravitates to the faded gray tee at the top of the pile. When she asks if she can borrow it you smile, nod. Turn your back.  
  
Doing so you spot her frail frame, catch a quick glimpse of her pearly skin. She's glowing, cast in moonlight and the fluorescence of the bulb before the cotton and Knicks insignia slip down to drape her. Effectively tenting her tiny frame. 

It was your favorite shirt. Now it's your favorite on her. You ask her to keep it the morning she packs her bag. That night you find it neatly folded and laundered at the foot of your bed. 

 

The next time she wears it you spot-clean the smears of blood from the collar. Help her to the toilet before her vomit obscures the logo.   
  
Her tears and your own mix to form drippy tracks down the front of the tee. Her sweat forms a charcoal cloud on the upper back.

She never takes it off on the days she has chemo treatments. You sit next to her in the camel colored leather chair. Watch her bunch the fabric in her clenched white fist while poison slowly drips into her fragile veins. 

  
One day at work between dry heaves, she looks up at you bleary eyed from the ladies room floor. Begs you without words to take the pain away. Put an end to the throbbing headache and crimson drips that landed both you and her in this vicious circle of hell. 

You slowly pull her to your chest, encircle your arms around her chilled, clammy body and reach behind you for the shirt. Draping the worn cloth over her, it frightens you how much of her is concealed in it now.  
  
You conceal your fear though and effectively slow your heart rate down. Lull her to a tranquil state in your arms before your tear tracks drip upon the letter K. 

  
  
You offer the shirt to lull her later on, to help absorb her tears after the funeral for her little girl. She opts to wait, uses it to cover the acrid scent of smoke and burnt metal and plaster that’s trapped in both your nostrils. 

  
You wonder if the frayed fabric has kept your partnership from fraying. If it along with her has kept you honest, made you whole, bridged the gap between you and her and her lips that you came within an inch of finally tasting. You can’t help wishing it acted as a barrier between the nape of her neck and that goddamned, fucking bee. 

  
You wish you had it in Antarctica when you stumbled on her exposed and intubated form. She did have it though, big time, and wore the shirt to cope with frostbite, a haunted game of who shot first, and a trigger happy new partner that wasn’t you. 

  
When her heart came within a hair of forced removal from her chest cavity, she bled into the white of her blouse and her cries bled into you. 

  
After you helped her change into comforting grey and later, put hips before hands and hands after hallucinations. She stroked your cheek, you called her your constant, and later held her hands as you found your closure.

  
You wonder if you draped her in the worn cotton instead of multicolor Navajo wool, if she’d have been in your bed when you woke up.  
  
  
When she is in your bed, cuddled to you and chilled you pray to a god that she believes in and you don’t for a miracle. She finds one, and the shirt briefly covers and consoles two.

  
On the floor of the cell and of a seedy motel you learn the truth, and later you learn the fabric stretched between the two of you can ward off the darkness.  
  
  
When she sits up in bed listening to the ravings of a lunatic madman, her Mulder, you see her in your new favorite shirt. It’s lighter, softer. The yellow glow from the overhead light catches in her hair and illuminates her skin. Tonight, you don’t turn your back. 

  
The next morning as she packs her bags she glances at you, nods to the freshly laundered and folded shirt resting on top of her opened suitcase. She asks if she can borrow it and you smile back before telling her that it’s her’s. It’s always been her’s.

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, writing this was so out of my element, I rarely write fics that don't revolve around dialogue, and I never write in second person. Not sure where this came from but I was prompted and...this came of it. Take as you will and please be gentle with me.


End file.
